The field of the invention relates to configuring a partition to use physical ports, provisioning the partition, and migrating the partition to a different physical port.
In a logically partitioned (“LPAR”) computer system, available system resources are allocated among multiple sets of resources so that each set of resources can be operated independently of the other. The task of splitting these resources among logical partitions is typically accomplished via a layer of software components commonly referred to as a hypervisor or, more generally, a partition manager.
The partition manager executes between the underlying hardware and the various logical partitions. One objective of a partition manager is to allow each logical partition to run software, such as operating systems and operating system specific applications that are typically developed to run on a dedicated computer system with little or no modification. For example, a system administrator may want one logical partition to run IBM's OS/400 operating system, a second logical partition to run IBM's AIX operating system, and a third logical partition to run the LINUX operating system. By providing the ability to run multiple operating systems on the same computer system, a LPAR computer system may provide a user with a great deal of freedom to choose the application software best suited to the users' need and with little or no regard to the operating system for which the application program was written. Running multiple logical partitions on a single system can better utilize system resources; for example, the utilization of processors and memory on a logical partitioned system is typically higher than separate systems. System resources can also be moved from one logical partition to another as required.